June 3, 2021
Albert Baron Ansu
Sierra Leoneans are united in open conversation on the challenging state of electricity distribution in urban settings, especially the capital Freetown. Now, citizens are in agreement on one point: insiders at the EDSA are complicit in the cable theft nightmare.
And with the recent arrest as corroborated by the Sierra Leone Police of two alleged EDSA staffers that aided the Kuntolor cable theft incident, justifies the need for the oversight ministry to come out with a statement bordering on policy actions to rid the establishment of the miscreants within.
This suggestion is important because the malaise could just be something of a systemic cancer that has festered into gangrene. If this is the case then some internal surgery must be considered to excise the tumors and give EDSA a new lease of life in the context of rolling back reprehensible forces perpetuating darkness.
I am of the view like many others are convinced that some people within the establishment are proficient in eluding the dangers when stealing parts from power generation and distribution systems.
Also, there is another gimmick for EDSA personnel to go into communities under the guise of trouble shooting a power problem and steal some parts to subsequently create power outages. This is also an angle of the problem discussed in many places. This could be a stereotype assumption and lends itself to the proverbial bad apple in a barrel. It is telling us that a sweeping allegation against EDSA in the prevailing sabotage undermining power distribution must not be entertained.
There are genuine workers in the Authority and must not be scandalized in what is happening; and this crop of staffers is in the majority. But what is glaringly coming out of the darkness is the gameplan to create bad political image of the government’s effort to improve the energy and power sector.
Nobody can dispute this possibility that is linked to our political culture of ingrained bigotry. When power sector stabilizes it is bound to cascade to economic advantages for the citizenry. And it is one surest means to make a government popular much to the chagrin of the opposition. The paradox of this troubling situation that all partisans, whether red, green and pink… are all affected by the fluctuating load shedding condition of power. It is evincing an ambivalent character in some Sierra Leoneans that want and hate the power flow at the same time. So much as everybody seems to be suggesting that those citizens stealing cables and other spare parts from EDSA facilities must be slaughtered as public enemies, there are those who inwardly happy about their dark acts.
This is the vortex of the problem that the EDSA is situated within. And what is supposed to be a redemptive measure for the energy sector is to change the public opinion with strong disciplinary measure to be instituted. Let it be a high risk breach of work ethics to steal parts from transformers and dissuade those inside EDSA rogues and political stooges bent on rolling back electricity gains by stealth. Beyond that there has to be legislations stronger the larceny laws under which those arrested are likely going to be charged to have a leeway of attracting lesser penalties compare to the magnitude of the crimes.
It is also of necessity to look into the possibility of proscribing the copper underground trade- propping the economic, not the political impulse to vandalize the electricity facilities. The more thought process that is put into dealing with a national emergency, the better the chances of getting out of the artificially contrived darkness. And harnessing civic vigilance is one strong arsenal we cannot dispense with in the circumstance.